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Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Property) Bill

To be fair, I am not sure that that is accurate. In that situation, the husband would probably be committing the offence of burglary anyway, because burglary is not just thieving: rape and grievous bodily harm, for example, can constitute burglary. People often think that burglary is just stealing; it is not. It can include other offences linked to breaking into a property. The problem is that the Bill refers not to burglary but simply to people trespassing on buildings. The definitions of trespass in civil law and in criminal law are different, as are the definitions of the motive of the person entering the building. The situation is very confusing indeed, and part of the problem is that the Bill is unclear on the circumstances to which it would apply. As has been demonstrated in a number of different examples given today, under the Bill, the person defending themselves could be completely unclear as to which test applies: the reasonable force test or the excessive, disproportionate force test. They would not know where they stood, and the creation of such confusion would put them in a very difficult position. There is a very real risk that they might naturally assume that they could use disproportionate force in circumstances where they in fact could not. The consequence could be entirely the opposite of that intended. People could end up appearing in the dock to defend themselves who currently would not need to, because as it stands they would be using reasonable, rather than disproportionate, force. If someone used the latter in circumstances where they were entitled to use only the former, they would rightly be charged with a criminal offence. That could happen under the Bill, simply because it has led them up the garden path.